If ever a name defined an organization's mission, this is the
case with Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) Weapon Systems Support
(WSS). Weapon systems used by Navy and Marine Corps Warfighters require
spare parts support, and that is exactly what NAVSUP WSS provides.

In a nutshell, NAVSUP WSS makes sure the fleet and other customers
have the spare parts they need, when the need them, and where they need
them. Spare parts availability is crucial to the combat capability of
weapon systems, and providing this capability is at the core of
everything NAVSUP WSS does every day.

NAVSUP WSS is an innovative, award winning organization, and a
Department of Defense (DoD) leader in areas such as Performance Based
Logistics (PBL) and use of the virtual organization construct. This
article provides a little of NAVSUP WSS' history, some general
organizational information, a review of its products and services, and a
few statistics that give a sense of the scope of its business
operations.

This article will also introduce the command's primary
functions, and additional articles in this edition provide a
comprehensive view of NAVSUP WSS' operations.

History

NAVSUP WSS stood up on Oct. 1, 1995, as the Naval Inventory Control
Point (NAVICP). Subsequently on July 1, 2011, NAVICP was renamed to
NAVSUP Weapon Systems Support as part of the "ONE NAVSUP"
initiative.

NAVSUP WSS operates as an "interwoven" or single, virtual
command with two primary sites, Philadelphia and Mechanicsburg, both
located in Pennsylvania. Mechanicsburg is located just outside of
Harrisburg, the capital of Pennsylvania, about 110 miles west from
Philadelphia via the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Philadelphia is the site
which focuses on aviation and international support, while the emphasis
in Mechanicsburg is on ships, submarines and nuclear propulsion. NAVSUP
WSS also has a small presence in Norfolk, Va., where the Price Fighters
department provides cost analyses for Navy and other DoD activities.

Prior to October 1995, both were separate commands ... the Aviation
Supply Office (ASO) in Philadelphia, and the Ships Parts Control Center
(SPCC) in Mechanicsburg. Both commands had a rich history of their own,
and provided outstanding spare parts support for more than 50 years
before merging.

The Philadelphia site dates back to 1917 with the establishment of
the Naval Aircraft Factory at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. In order
to support the expanding and complex Naval Air System, ASO was founded
on October 1. In December 1942, ASO moved to its own home within the
Naval Aviation Supply Depot at its current location in the Lawncrest
area of Philadelphia, on the grounds of the former Keystone Brickyard.
For this reason, the base was often referred to as "The
Brickyard."

The history of SPCC dates back to 1944 when the Naval Supply Depot,
Mechanicsburg, was directed to form a master control for ships'
parts. In July 1945, SPCC was established as the single worldwide
manager for ships parts, i.e. the mechanical components that are put
together to make a ship and its engines. The official commissioning of
SPCC took place on July 24, 1953. Submarine and reactor support moved to
SPCC in the 1960s, and were consolidated by 1985. Some wonder why an
activity supporting ships is located in the middle of Pennsylvania and
lore has it that the Mechanicsburg site was chosen because it was as
close to Philadelphia and Washington shipyards and major east coast
transportation routes as possible, while far enough inland to be out of
range of shells from enemy battleships should they reach Washington,
Baltimore, or Philadelphia.

In 1996, the Naval International Logistics Control Office
(NAVILCO), which provides logistic assistance and foreign military sales support to more than 80 countries, consolidated with NAVICP. The Price
Fighters contingent was incorporated in 2004 as part of NAVSUP's
transformation initiative.

Organization

In the "interwoven" organizational structure,
"back-room" support functions such as finance, contracting and
information systems support share resources and operate with common
processes. The distinct operational codes that directly support
Aviation, Ships and Submarines, Nuclear Propulsion and Foreign Military
Sales remain intact to support the unique needs of their customers.

NAVSUP WSS successfully operates as a single command by leveraging
video teleconferencing (VTC) capabilities, email, and the internet, as
well as relatively close proximity, which allows for a leadership
presence at both sites. This is an efficient organizational construct in
that the labor cost for 468 people has been avoided every year since our
stand up in 1995.

The chart below displays the NAVSUP WSS organizational wire
diagram. It reflects the virtual structure with the
"interwoven" components that support both sites in blue. Rear
Adm. John King is NAVSUP WSS' Commander and Karen Meloy is our Vice
Commander. Capt. Mark Murphy is the Comptroller, Capt. Chris Mosher is
the head Contracting Officer, and Tom Wirfel is the head of Operations
Research and Information Technology (IT) Liaison.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Yellow represents the operational components located in
Philadelphia. Capt. Leigh Ackart and Capt. Jim Johnson are the Deputy
Commanders for Aviation and International Programs, respectively. Capt.
Duke Heinz is the head of Aviation Operations, and Cmdr. Dan Hodgson is
the head of Fleet Outfitting, Planning & Support. The green blocks
are the Maritime components located in Mechanicsburg, with Capt. Derric
Turner serving as the Deputy Commander for Ships & Submarines. Capt.
Ray Bichard, Capt. Jim LaPointe and Capt. Mark Dibble are the heads of
Maritime Operations, Special Emphasis Programs and Nuclear Operations,
respectively. The lone orange component is the Engineering & Product
Support Directorate headed by Capt. Rick Smitha, which has components at
both primary sites as well as Price Fighters in Norfolk.

Business Profile

NAVSUP WSS is a large business enterprise, filling more than
600,000 customer orders and registering annual sales of about $6.3
billion a year.

It is important to note that NAVSUP WSS operates with a revolving
fund called the Navy Working Capital Fund (NWCF), where parts are sold
to the fleet and in turn, the money is used to buy new spares or repair
broken units. This concept will be explored in more detail in the
Comptroller article.

NAVSUP WSS controls more than $22 billion in inventory, and is
responsible for managing more than 416,000 supply line items, 54 percent
of which are repairable components. In fact, NAVSUP WSS' key
capability lies in managing the complexities associated with the
repairable supply chain. Factors such as source certification, depot
facilitization, first article testing, packaging, container development
and availability, retrograde management and G condition (awaiting parts)
issues must be taken into account.

More than 173,000 repaired units are obtained annually from organic
depots and commercial sources. The command also has a robust contracting
shop that produces more than 35,000 contract actions a year, primarily
related to repair contracts and PBLs. Because of Base Realignment and
Closure (BRAC) 2005, co-located Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) buyers
perform new spares procurements, as they do for all the services.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

From a resource perspective, NAVSUP WSS employs just fewer than
2,300 people with an operating budget of $274 million, split about
evenly between the two primary sites. In addition, NAVSUP WSS has close
to 100 military (mostly officers) including 13 Marines. The total force
is rounded-out by just more than 100 contractor support personnel.

Like many DoD organizations, NAVSUP WSS downsized significantly
during the past several years due to force structure reductions,
consolidations, regionalization, outsourcing, major organizational
initiatives such as Transformation and BRAC, and general efficiency
measures such as Interweaving and Continuous Process Improvement (CPI).

To provide a historical, somewhat eye-popping perspective, at the
height of the military build-up in the late 1980s under President Ronald
Reagan, the combined workforce for the two sites was more than 7,700! In
recent years, however, as many experienced personnel have retired, the
command has resumed hiring efforts, bringing almost 1,200 new employees
aboard since 2006. This has allowed the command to reshape the workforce
with the most up-to-date skill sets, while improving diversity and
increasing hiring of veterans and the disabled.

FMS Case Management services are provided to Navy case managers and
Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customers on a reimbursable basis including
case development, execution and closure.

Engineering Support Services involves engineering and technical
support for items procured and repaired to meet required specifications.
Services are provided to DLA on a reimbursable basis in response to
Requests for Engineering Support, commonly referred to as the "339
process."

Price Fighters is an ISO 9000 certified cost and engineering
analysis program that offers a complete spectrum of support to the
acquisition business management community throughout the Department of
the Navy (DoN), DoD and Civilian Federal Agencies in support of total
ownership cost reduction efforts. The two primary areas of support are
should-cost analysis and consulting services provided to customers on a
reimbursable basis.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Functions

NAVSUP WSS has a dual focus, both on its more familiar fleet supply
support role, but also on its program support role, in order to provide
material support through the life cycle of the weapons system. The
supply support role is more familiar because it is the more visible
"customer focus" role with functions directly related to the
planning and execution of material support on a day-to-day basis. The
weapon systems focused program support role, however, is less obvious to
the customer, yet the functions are equally critical to enabling
readiness. Some of the major functions are detailed below.

* Procure Material - Contracting for repair services and developing
PBL agreements is the function of acquiring supplies & services in
support of requirements, in accordance with laws, regulations, policies,
and procedures. The activities normally associated are procurement
planning, solicitation of offers, the award of contracts, contractor
surveillance and the management of active contracts. Note that DLA does
the spares procurements for us.

* Allowance Development - Developing and publishing allowances and
load lists for normal and contingency operations.

* Customer Service - Interfacing with customers for supply support
concerns, and serving as a single face to the Fleet and industrial
customers and suppliers for requirements and technical information
including monitoring movement, status, backorders and expediting.

Program Support

* Life Cycle Management - Providing cradle to grave support to
Hardware Systems Commands (HSCs), from initial production to ramp up
into declining systems & ultimately phase out to include
decommissioning and disposal.

* Interim Support - A subset of item introduction, involves supply
and inventory management support for a new or modified weapon
systems/equipment provided from Initial Operational Capability (IOC)
date to Material Support Date (MSD).

* Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) - Supporting the HSC in
development of coordinated supply, maintenance, training, and
transportation of naval weapons systems.

* Maintenance Planning - Developing detailed data pertaining to the
identification of maintenance and logistics support resources and
requirements for weapon systems and equipments.

* Configuration Management - This is the technical surveillance
over the life cycle of items to identify and document the functional and
physical characteristics of configuration items; control changes to
configuration items and their related documentation; record and report
information needed to manage configuration items effectively, including
the status of proposed changes and implementation status of approved
changes; and, audit configuration items to verify conformance to
specifications, drawings, and other contract requirements.

George Holland has 35 years experience at NAVSUP WSS working as a
Logistics Manager, Systems Analyst, and in his current position as
Executive Staff Officer. He has played a key role in many major
organizational changes and holds an MBA in Management Information
Systems from LaSalle University.

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